Month: January 2024

Cities across the country are counting their homeless in an effort to get a handle on how big the problem is.

In the city of Detroit, 25 teams of volunteers will count the number of homeless throughout the city on Jan. 31.

‘Seahorse Births’: Abortion Doula Normalizes ‘Pregnant Men’ Giving Birth in Lecture to Catholic University Students

January 28, 2024 Virginia Star Staff

A self-declared “abortion doula” spoke this week to Catholic University of America students about her experiences coaching women through delivering or aborting babies, as well as coaching “pregnant men” to deliver in what she called a “seahorse birth,” according to audio of the class lecture obtained by The Daily Signal.

A Catholic University nursing student described Tuesday’s lecture to The Daily Signal, saying the guest speaker said she also practices Reiki, a controversial Japanese method of spiritual healing and self-improvement.

Denver Program That Pays Homeless People a Monthly Income is Open to Migrants

A program partially-funded by the city of Denver that pays homeless people a regular stipend is eligible to migrants as long as they meet the criteria, according to the city.

The Denver Basic Income Program, which was started in 2021 with the aid of $2 million from the city of Denver, announced it will go at least six months more beginning in February 2024.

TSNN Featured: Gina Swoboda Wins Election to Arizona Republican Party Chair in Decisive Victory

January 28, 2024January 27, 2024 Admin

Commentary: ‘Disturbing’ Collusion Between Biden White House and Trump Prosecutors

January 28, 2024 Julie Kelly

Before the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith in November 2022, Joe Biden’s Department of Justice was in the process of conducting two separate criminal investigations into Donald Trump: his attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of sensitive government files.

Smith took over both matters to demonstrate the DOJ’s “independence” from politics, the public was told, although he took with him prosecutors and investigators already assigned to the existing inquiries. His team continues to insist their work is devoid of any influence from or cooperation with the Biden regime. Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland say the same.

Commentary: 100 Canadian Churches Torched or Damaged Following Indian Residential School Graves Hoax

January 28, 2024January 27, 2024 Virginia Star Staff

To its credit, the London-based tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail recently carried a story most corporate news outlets have been avoiding: The Indian Residential School Graves hoax.

The paper, whose article titles are characteristically long and descriptive, leaves little mystery in the scandalous story’s headline: “Nearly ONE HUNDRED churches across Canada have been torched or damaged after activists lied that 200 indigenous children were buried under Catholic schools.”

Commentary: The Tricky Business of Branding

January 28, 2024 Virginia Star Staff

Brand development has become a major focus for firms hoping to find or maintain success in advanced markets. According to Steve Forbes, “Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.” And he certainly is right.

A brand not only serves to identify firms and what they offer, it also conveys a company’s positioning strategy and value proposition. Promotional elements such as logos, names, symbols, and colors, are commonly leveraged for branding purposes but a brand can also be reinforced through pricing and distribution systems. For instance, if a company wants their product to be viewed as the best of the best, then they wouldn’t want it to be found on the shelves at a discount store. This is why Burberry has been known to burn excess inventory and perhaps it is also why premium brands will leverage opportunities to recycle their products.

Natural Gas Industry Wants to ‘Break the Poverty Cycle’

The natural gas industry plans to push for more support of a federal program to cover energy costs for low-income families in 2024 while talking up safety and reliability.

“We need to break the poverty cycle by working together,” Jerry Norcia, chairman of the board of the American Gas Association, said in a press call on Monday. “Government, nonprofits and corporations can remove the barriers that prevent access to a prosperous future.”

Commentary: Dual Enrollment Is a Homeschool Resource

January 28, 2024 Virginia Star Staff

This year marks the completion of high school for two of my children. Navigating the high school years has been both exciting and challenging. By the time our children had reached high school age, two things were apparent. First, homeschooling had allowed my kids to find and pursue their special interests—ones that had future career potential.

Second, while mastery of most subjects had been relatively easy, math and science were a bit more difficult. Despite overall higher testing outcomes within the homeschool community, there is a documented math gap for many homeschoolers. In other words, most homeschoolers score slightly lower than their non-homeschooled peers in math and science. (This is understandable, of course: I don’t know many mothers qualified to teach high-level math or science, and most of us don’t want our kitchens being turned into chemistry labs.)

Inflationary Woes: More Chain Stores Closed in 2023, Continuing into 2024

More chain stores closed in 2023 as a result of high inflationary costs, with the trend continuing in 2024 led by the iconic department store, Macy’s.

In 2023, retail stores, pharmaceutical and fast-food chains continued a trend of previous years: declaring bankruptcy and closing their doors or shutting down some locations to cut costs, citing inflation, higher costs, and profit losses.

Continued Inflation Tops List of Worries for Democrats, Republicans

A new poll shows that Democrats and Republicans are concerned more about inflation than other potential crises, but voters from the two parties don’t see eye to eye on other concerns, including the potential of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil or potential chaos after the 2024 election.

The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll conducted in conjunction with Noble Predictive Insights found that Republicans (45%) were more concerned about inflation than Democrats (32%). Concerns that inflation could continue and further drive up prices were highest for voters with children under 18 (47%) and those 45 to 54 years old (47%).

‘Absolutely Ridiculous’: Trump Vows to Appeal Defamation Trial Verdict

Former President Donald Trump on Friday posted on Truth Social that he would appeal the verdict against him in a defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

A Manhattan jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages Friday after he criticized her during a May 2023 town hall on CNN after he was found liable for defamation and sexual battery in a separate trial. In response to the verdict, Trump vowed to appeal the jury’s decision.

Top Story: Trump Leading Biden by More than He Ever Has Before

January 27, 2024 Admin

Top Commentary: The Left’s Ridiculous Disinformation on Tainted Zuck Bucks

January 27, 2024 Admin

Trump Leading Biden by More than He Ever Has Before

January 27, 2024January 26, 2024 Virginia Star Staff

Former President Donald Trump is currently polling better against President Joe Biden than he has at anytime in the last two presidential election cycles as the two men head toward a likely rematch in November.

Trump is ahead of Biden by 3.8 points in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average, which is his largest lead this cycle against the president. The lead is also far above Trump’s record for the last two cycles, where he never led Biden in the RCP average and was only ahead of Hillary Clinton during two separate periods in 2016.

Liberal Activists Reveal Their Biggest Fear About a Trump 2024 Victory

Should former President Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election, liberal activists fear difficulty raising funds to support their operations, according to a report by Politico.

Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, having won the first two primary contests of Iowa and New Hampshire, and is currently ahead of President Joe Biden, the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, in polls of battleground states. Should Trump become the 47th president of the United States in 2025, activists express the fear that they will lose donations amid dissatisfaction with politics from their supporters, Politico’s Michael Schaffer reported.

TSNN Featured: Donald Trump and Kari Lake Endorse Election Integrity Leader Gina Swoboda for AZGOP Chair, Election Tomorrow

January 27, 2024January 26, 2024 Admin

Collective Bargaining Advances to Virginia House Committee

January 27, 2024January 26, 2024 The Center Square

Two bills to expand collective bargaining in the commonwealth came before the House Labor and Commerce Subcommittee #2 Thursday, one by Del. Katrina Callsen, D-Albemarle, for public transportation providers and the other by Del. Kathy Tran, D-Fairfax, for all public employees in Virginia.

The subcommittee quickly voted to incorporate Callsen’s bill into Tran’s HB 1001, expanding collective bargaining for public sector employees from something authorized at the local level to a universal right for all, including state employees.

Commentary: The Left’s Ridiculous Disinformation on Tainted Zuck Bucks

Anyone who’s followed the Mark Zuckerberg “Zuck bucks” story since 2020 has witnessed some spectacular acrobatics from the left.

First, it was denial that a partisan billionaire was trying to privatize the election in swing states. Then, when Democrats unseated President Trump, NPR and others praised Zuck bucks for “saving” the election. When the 2022 midterms came, the cry was for more private funding to “rehabilitate” democracy. Now the media’s latest stop: gaslighting the public into believing any criticism of leftist “dark money” is just conservative propaganda, rather than one of the worst election innovations of our time.

Corporate Media in Crisis as Outlets Grapple with Biden’s Economy

Numerous legacy media outlets are struggling with challenges posed by President Joe Biden’s economy and resorting to drastic measures, Axios reported on Friday.

Close to a dozen of these outlets are firing workers, dealing with employee strikes or looking to sell, according to Axios. The Federal Reserve’s imposition of high interest rates to bring down inflation is hindering their ability to accumulate more debt, complicating their efforts to extend the timeline for resolving their financial difficulties.

House January 6 Investigator Says White House Foot-Dragging ‘Unacceptable,’ Warns of Subpoenas Ahead

January 27, 2024 Just the News

The House subcommittee chairman leading the Jan. 6 investigation is declaring that the Biden White House’s foot-dragging has been “unacceptable” and he is putting both presidential aides and the Georgia county prosecutor pursuing Donald Trump on notice that Congress is prepared to pursue evidence, up to and including subpoenas and contempt.

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., on Thursday evening gave a sweeping update on his House Administration oversight subcommittee’s efforts to obtain evidence, saying Democrats from the White House and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., were not providing the cooperation needed to give Americans the facts and answers they are missing from the tragedy three years ago in the U.S. Capitol.

Commentary: Logically.AI of Britain and the Expanding Global Reach of Censorship

January 27, 2024 RealClearWire

Brian Murphy, a former FBI agent who once led the intelligence wing of the Department of Homeland Security, reflected last summer on the failures of the Disinformation Governance Board – the panel formed to actively police misinformation. The board, which was proposed in April 2022 after he left DHS, was quickly shelved by the Biden administration in a few short months in the face of criticism that it would be an Orwellian state-sponsored “Ministry of Truth.”

In a July podcast, Murphy said the threat of state-sponsored disinformation meant the executive branch has an “ethical responsibility” to rein in the social media companies. American citizens, he said, must give up “some of your freedoms that you need and deserve so that you get security back.”

Commentary: The Elite One Percent Behind the Cultural Civil War

Scott Rasmussen has done America an enormous service. He and his team have identified the driving forces behind the destructive radicalism which is pushing us into a cultural civil war.

While doing their two weekly national surveys, Rasmussen and his team noticed an anomaly. Out of every 1,000 or so respondents, there would always be three or four who were far more radical than everyone else. After several months of finding these unusual responses, Rasmussen realized they all shared three characteristics.

Jury Awards E. Jean Carroll $83.3 Million over Trump’s 2019 Statements

January 26, 2024 Just the News

A New York jury on Friday awarded Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in damages over defamatory statements the former president made in 2019 after she came forward with allegations against him, CNN reported.

FBI Luminaries Starkly Warn Congress that U.S. Being Invaded at Border: ‘Alarming and Perilous’

January 26, 2024 Just the News

With a constitutional crisis brewing in Texas and voters nationwide alarmed by the toll of illegal immigration, some of the FBI’s most famous retired executives are issuing a stark warning to Congress that President Joe Biden’s border policies have unleashed an “invasion” of military-aged male foreigners who pose “one of the most pernicious ever” threats to American security.

Draft Resolution to Declare Trump the Presumptive Nominee Withdrawn

A draft resolution to declare former President Donald Trump the presumptive GOP nominee was withdrawn just hours after it was proposed on Thursday evening, the Daily Caller News Foundation confirmed.

Top Story: Leadership of Major U.S. Landowner Chock-Full of Chinese Communist Party Members

Top Commentary: Big Labor State Politicians’ ‘Wall of Denial’ Is Starting to Crumble

Leadership of Major U.S. Landowner Chock-Full of Chinese Communist Party Members

January 26, 2024January 25, 2024 Virginia Star Staff

Top executives at Hong Kong-based WH Group Limited, the world’s largest pork producer that controls vast swaths of U.S. farmland through its American subsidiary, are Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of corporate records and state-run media reports.

Records and reports reviewed by the DCNF identify four top executives and the chairman of the pork giant as CCP members with extensive ties to the Chinese government. WH Group controls nearly 150,000 acres of land across 29 U.S. states through its subsidiary Smithfield Foods, a family-run business established in 1936, which it purchased for $7.1 billion in 2013. While a keyword search on Smithfield’s website returned only two articles mentioning the firm’s relationship with WH Group, neither of the two articles mentioned China. An online map of Smithfield’s global business activities does not list any operations in, or connection to, Asia, despite archived reports from their website suggesting otherwise.

U.S. Economic Growth Exceeds Expectations with Rate Cuts on the Horizon

The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 3.3% in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to gross domestic product (GDP) statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Thursday.

In the third quarter of 2023, real GDP rose 4.9%, down from the second estimate of 5.2%, but in line with initial estimates. Economists expected that GDP growth would be around 2% for the fourth quarter of 2023, in line with typical U.S. growth rates.

TSNN Featured: Trump Cancels Arizona Appearance, Arizona Republicans Cancel Freedom Fest in Wake of AZGOP Audio Release

Commentary: Big Labor State Politicians’ ‘Wall of Denial’ Is Starting to Crumble

January 26, 2024 RealClearWire

For decades, cold, hard data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have shown that states like New Jersey, Illinois and California are paying a high price for allowing dues-hungry union bosses to continue getting workers fired for refusal to bankroll their organizations.

Year after year, far more taxpayers have been leaving forced-unionism states than moving into them. And the average tax filer moving out of a forced-unionism state has reported having an adjusted gross income (AGI) on his or her IRS form that is substantially higher than the average for a tax filer moving into a forced-unionism state.

Youngkin Declared Biden Can’t ‘Deal with Our Border’ Before Announcing ‘Virginia Stands with Texas’

January 26, 2024January 25, 2024 Tom Pappert

Governor Glenn Youngkin responded on Wednesday to President Joe Biden referring to former Governor Terry McAuliffe as the “real governor” of Virginia before he later announced “Virginia stands with Texas” in the standoff between Governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration over Abbott’s efforts to protect the state’s southern border.

Biden launched a Tuesday campaign event by greeting Virginia and “the real governor, Terry McAuliffe,” which White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted was a joke. After Biden’s apparent attempt at comedy, Youngkin told 12 On Your Side on Wednesday that he was not surprised the president “doesn’t know who the Governor of Virginia is.”

Planned Parenthood Video Calls Virginity ‘Made Up’ and Not Inclusive of ‘Queer People’

Planned Parenthood released a video Wednesday arguing that virginity is a “completely made up concept” and complains that the term leaves out queer people.

The video opens with a woman in a classroom, who argues that the word virginity was “created simply to control and shame people” and later claims that the reason “virginity is whack” is because “sex means different things to different people.” The woman says that the traditional definition of virginity, “penetration – penis into vagina,” doesn’t fit queer people or those who choose to have other kinds of sex such as anal.

Music Spotlight: Krystal King

January 26, 2024 Bethany Bowman

Krystal King has had country music in her soul practically since birth. Her parents told her that when she was a toddler, they were scanning the radio stations and when it got to an Alan Jackson song, she squealed, “Oh stop, stop.” And she has been listening to country music ever since.

As she got older, the North Carolina native was visiting friends on the coast. A man was DJing at a restaurant. Her parents dared to get up there and sing a song. So, she walked up to him and asked him if I could sing “You’re Still the One” by Shania Twain.

Commentary: America Can’t Afford Never Trump’s Nihilism

It was a wise decision for Ron DeSantis to end his presidential campaign when he did. There would have been no point in prolonging a bitter and divisive primary battle when Trump has clearly won already. By endorsing Trump, DeSantis opened the door to repairing some of the damage from what turned out to be a disastrous career move. And he did the right thing for the country by signaling to his supporters that it was time to unite and focus on ending the Biden regime.

Unfortunately, just a day later, DeSantis took a gratuitous swipe at Trump. It was chum for many of DeSantis’ hardcore supporters, who remain full of spite after months of back-and-forth with the MAGA “cult.”

Major Liberal Charities Funneling Millions into Arms of Chinese Government, Documents Show

Three major American charities collectively poured more than $10 million into Chinese government entities, universities and groups controlled by members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) between 2017 and 2022, tax documents show.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation together donated about $10.2 million directly to the Chinese government and to organizations headed by top-ranking CCP members, according to tax disclosures. Chinese beneficiaries of the American philanthropies include state-run universities that collaborate with the People’s Liberation Army, as well as government ministries.

Maine’s Highest Court Dismisses Trump Ballot Case Appeal

January 26, 2024 The Center Square

Maine’s highest court has declined to take up an appeal of a ruling over a move to take former President Donald Trump’s name off the state’s GOP primary ballot.

In a decision issued Wednesday, the Supreme Judicial Court dismissed an appeal by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, asking justices to overturn a lower court ruling delaying a decision on the ballot challenge. The court said it would be improper to rule on a case that has yet to be decided.

Illegal Aliens Camping Out in Boston Airport